except for the small matter of surrendering your free will, living in a commune, supporting the group by working as a

"celebrity photographer," marrying whomever they chose, and breeding more clairvoyants.

Adele touched her stomach. She'd done the breeding part, all right. Just not with the right partner. Her child would be a more powerful clairvoyant than she could have produced with Colm – the Cabal was certainly convinced of that –

but to the kumpania, what she'd done was an atrocity, her child an abomination.

Another reason for Adele to leave the group before they found out. But if she jumped at Irving Nast's current offer, he'd see her eagerness and take advantage.

Adele was supposed to meet Irving again that morning. She hadn't dared – couldn't risk him smelling her fear. So she'd called his answering service, leaving a message saying she couldn't make it and would call to reschedule. He wouldn't like that. The longer she postponed, the sooner he'd sense trouble and try to find her.

She had to get those photos and eliminate every trace of them. If that meant killing again – or having Colm do it for her – that was fine. After all, they were only humans. Outsiders. Inconsequential.

HOPE

After getting all she could from the officer in the coffee shop, Hope made a pit stop at the True News office.

Checking in, getting her mail... Hardly critical under the circumstances, but if Robyn was a fugitive and Hope was her best friend in L.A., eventually the cops were going to find their way to her door. And when they did, she might need to prove she'd been going about her day, business as usual.

After that token appearance, Hope and Karl returned to the club. He stood watch as she circled the exterior trying to find the place closest to the crime scene. If she could find it, she might catch a vision of what had happened last night.

It took some fine-tuning to pinpoint the spot, but eventually the vision came.

Hope saw a dark room, with Portia leaning over what looked like a table. Doing lines, it seemed. She was anxious, worried about being caught, feeling guilty, telling herself this would be the last time. At a noise, Portia had jumped, a small burst of chaos exploding. She wheeled to see someone in the doorway.

"Hello?" she said, forcing attitude into her voice. "This room's taken."

Whatever she saw, Hope didn't. A vision wasn't like the reconstruction of an event, where she could move around and see the whole thing. It was a single-camera scene. What she saw is what she got – whatever angle, clarity and length.

As usual, her focus was on the victim.

"I need to use your cell phone," the intruder said. It sounded like a woman, the voice pitched high with stress, the waves flowing off her twice as strong as Portia's.

"Like hell. There's a pay phone in the – "

"I need your cell phone."

"Buy your own, bitch. Now get the hell out before I call my bodyguard."

"You didn't bring one. You only take one when you want to show off."

Portia inhaled sharply, chaos blasting off her. "Wh – what – "

"It's called a gun. Now give me the fucking cell phone."

Portia opened her mouth. Only a split-second shriek escaped. Then the chaos surged, so strong it blocked the rest of the vision. Hope had to replay it twice to see the ending. Portia started to scream, reeling back, then the first bullet hit and the scream died in her throat. A second bullet struck as she was already going down, the silenced shots barely more than loud puffs of air.

It was over quickly, the chaos surge brief but powerful, that final explosion... exquisite.

The first time Hope had seen a vision of a recent death, there'd been no pleasure in it. Too intense. Too uncomfortable. She'd taken solace in that. It was one thing to get a thrill from hearing strangers arguing. But to enjoy another's death? She wouldn't know how to deal with that.

Soon she had to. As her powers grew, she started to enjoy death. It was the purest, most perfect chaos imaginable.

The ultimate high.

Even if she stopped chasing weird tales for True News and investigating rogue supernaturals for the council, she couldn't escape the experience of death. Passing the site of a recent car crash was enough. Short of locking herself into a room for life, she had no choice – she had to learn to deal with it.

With Karl's help, she was learning to accept the demon in her. She'd come to think of it that way: the demon. That didn't mean it was a separate entity – she could never make that mistake. It was as much part of her as Karl's wolf was of him. But it didn't need to rule who she was. She had to learn to appease it and control it. Accept the demon, master it and use it to her advantage, to protect herself and help others.

If it sounded like she had it all worked out, she didn't. Intellectually, she understood the lessons Karl taught her about acceptance and control. But that didn't keep her from feeling like a ghoul.

When Karl came looking for her behind the club, she was huddled against the alley wall, hugging her knees, forcing herself to replay the vision over and over, through that endless cycle of bliss and self-loathing until she'd wrested every last clue from it, fighting and cursing when he hefted her over his shoulder and carried her away.

So, no, she didn't have it worked out. And she was starting to think she never would.

ROBYN

There had been a moment, after waking on the park bench, when Robyn had reflected back on the events of the night and decided the answer was simple. She'd cracked.

After one too many glasses of champagne, she'd gone into that dark hall at Bane, and like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, she'd emerged in some hellish alternate reality of her mind's own making, where Portia had died, then Judd, and she was the primary suspect.

A shrink would claim the whole scenario was a subconscious manifestation of illogical guilt over Damon's death.

Whether it was indeed a complete mental collapse or simply a drunken nightmare, she was relieved. A mental hospital she could deal with. Not like she hadn't expected to end up in one anyway.

Her relief lasted until she passed a newsstand outside the park and saw the newspaper headlines. It was like someone cut her power cord again, and she meandered for an hour, shocked, confused, lost... and thoroughly disgusted with herself for it.